Eyes everywhere: NSA's second tier spying partners identified

Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and several other EU countries were named among “third party partners” in the NSA-led global signal intelligence program, a new leak submitted by journalist Glenn Greenwald to Danish TV reveals.

According to the document, obtained by Swedish TV program
‘Mission: Investigate’, that has been probing Sweden's
participation in global spying operations, nine European
countries were added to the list of NSA accomplices.

The "third party partners" to the Five Eyes nations has now grown
to include nine states - Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium,
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain.

The newly-leaked document from Edward Snowden is the first
written confirmation of Denmark's formal agreement with the NSA,
the Copenhagen Post writes.

Denmark’s role in US spying scheme was labeled “very
worrying” by Enhedslisten's Pernille Skipper, Danish
parliamentarian.

“When Denmark is one of the US intelligence services' close
allies, one must ask themselves what it is we are giving in
return,” Skipper told public broadcaster DR.

“When you consider this along with the other revelations that
have come out, which insinuate that the US systematically spies
on residents throughout Europe in violation of very basic rights,
then you can naturally fear that the collaboration between
Denmark and the US means that Danes have been spied upon.”

The list of new NSA partners was made public last week as part of
the new batch of NSA-documents from the Snowden-Greenwald
collection. The ‘14-Eyes’ group, the document also revealed, send
their staff for training to the US. The group is also known as
the SIGINT Seniors Europe or SSEUR.

On its website the NSA writes that foreign Signals Intelligence
(SIGINT) is “specifically limited to gathering information
about international terrorists and foreign powers, organizations,
or persons.”

Until the recent wire, the trickling of NSA leaks suggested that
a number of countries were involved. France, Germany, Norway,
Italy, Belgium and allegedly Spain were perceived to be the NSA’s
3rd party partners.

Sweden, Denmark and especially the Netherlands were not listed as
such, but SVT’s earlier episodes revealed the Swedish signals
intelligence agency (FRA)
spied on Russian leaders and businesses and shared the data
collected with the US.

The third party "partners" need to worry about being “victims
of NSA surveillance,” because of negative “trust”
relationships they will have with the US based on economic
interests, whistleblower Jesselyn Radack, of the Government
Accountability Project told RT.

“The NSA has not only violated the trust of its own citizens
by conducting mass dragnet surveillance on innocent people but
doing it to the innocent populations of the allied nations.”

NSA’s global reach is “completely unnecessary”, because
it destroys diplomacy and undermines economic relations with
other countries. Radack argues the NSA is just gathering
intelligence on people that are suspected of doing
“absolutely nothing.”
“I think we see these reverberations not just among the 5 eyes
countries, some of whom have been colluding in helping the NSA
gather this data, but we see reverberations worldwide and they
are far reaching, because again, NSA tentacles have been far
reaching” she added.